


Of Amber Petals

by orionstarlight



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Death, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orionstarlight/pseuds/orionstarlight
Summary: “It’s all I’ve ever wanted too.” The words ricochet around the room, snapping the strings.“Get out.”Kageyama can’t stop coughing. At least Hinata is by his side.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Of Amber Petals

* * *

His chest feels heavy as he stands, wet towel held firmly against his forehead, wheezing with every breath he takes.

He doesn’t understand it. All he can tell is that he hasn’t been taking care of himself as well as he should have, but he cannot find it in him to do much more than lay in a bed that is no longer comfortable.

The sun that comes in through the undrawn curtains burns at his eyes, and once more his throat tightens and he’s running to the bathroom again, coughing up the fire in his throat, but it feels nothing like poetry.

It’s disgusting, a sludge that keeps boiling to the surface, begging to be let out, stitching up his lungs so he has no air, killing him so fast yet so slow.

The bed is perfectly visible from where he lies on the cold tiles, back against a wall, and he can still see the dent in the mattress, the one last reminder that he wasn’t always alone here, in this place that they built together.

Memories are scattered in crevices, haunting him like ghosts with loose ends to tie up, wailing in his ears day and night.

He’s lying to himself. Of course he understands it, no matter what he tells himself. He understands exactly why he’s suffocating, pieces of him scattered everywhere, no one coming to put him back together. Not that anyone really knows what it is that he’s being put through. The sense of pride he established long ago won’t let him share his emptiness with someone he thinks won’t understand.

He gets up slowly, but not with ease, the bones in his legs threatening to snap like twigs. Feeling strong; he’s almost forgotten what that’s like.

His phone buzzes on his nightstand, but he ignores it, already knowing what the notification is going to be. Taking the towel away from his head, wiping the sweat away as he does so, shaking from the way his body temperature keeps rising and failing. What can he do now but give his body to this force that wants to control it.

_ “Bakageyama.” _

His head whips around but there’s no one there, and he smiles sadly at his hopefulness, fingers digging into the edge of the dresser, steadying himself.  _ You’re home alone, idiot. Stop imagining things.  _

Feet stepping over dirty clothes and piled up clutter, he moves out of the bedroom, marvelling at just how empty the space really feels, how castaway. He laughs, the sound hollow, cracked. He catches the curse that comes out of his mouth, throwing it down the kitchen sink.

“You’re sick? Why didn’t you tell me?” A voice as warm as the sunset on a summer’s day. Bones brittle, he stumbles, but he catches him despite his height, chuckling. “More clumsy than me.”

“Sh—” he swallows the sick in his throat “—Shōyō.”

He giggles. “Hi, Tobio. Miss me?”

He retches into the sink once, twice, neatly and then turns back. He’s still there, looking at him with eyes made of glass, shiny and wet, worried so big they’ve turned into fear, and the both of them look at each other, seconds away from letting their tears fall. 

“You’re not here,” he says, makes the mistake of blinking, and as a cinematic tear rolls down his cheek, he’s proven right. No orange hair flutters in the non-existent wind, a barren apartment staring back at him. He spits out what remains on his tongue, turning away from the sludge in disgust.

These are things of fairy tales, they have no reason to be real, yet every time he feels his stomach overturn, he cannot disguise the pain as nothing more than a figment of his imagination. It seems that he is not immune to the stories tell their children about at night, to the years of myths and folklore he never bothered to learn about.

Things of fairy tales have a tight grasp on him, then. They have followed him around from before he could distinguish right from wrong, disguised a shadow in the shape of him. Drawing the curtains, he shakes his mind free from those thoughts, wanting to find any way to be distracted. Seeing things that aren’t dreams is not a sign of a bettering condition.

* * *

Pulled out, he showed up, looking as respectful as he could with red under his eyes and an esophagus that was never sated no matter how hydrated he stayed. He may not have been around for long, but what he saw of the engagement party was enough to have him on his knees in the guest bathroom, throwing up what little he had eaten.

Flu season, he’d said, and left with the concern of not wanting anything to happen to the happy couple. Blaming it on someone else was a fine talent, a perfected technique. To be able to spin lies like Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold is no small feat, certainly not one just anyone can achieve, but to him it’s a practised movement, one that comes as easy as breathing.

He’s hunched over the sink the moment he returns home, neck aching. Perhaps as easy as retching, now, not breathing. Simple has adopted a new meaning where he’s concerned, no longer referring to the same things everyone else experiences.

The very thought of his uniqueness is enough to have him desperate to throw up his heart while he stands over the sink. Why call something normalcy and then have it be so vastly different? The irony is so blatant only an idiot could miss it. He wishes he were an idiot.

A hand pulls him from the sink, fingers lacing with his, pulling him close. “Dance with me,” the voice whispers. “Dance with me like it’s  _ our  _ engagement party we’re at.”

His legs move without much instruction, dazed and obedient. Not a part of him dares to refuse, wanting to feel every beat of his heart that counts as the music, a soft hum in his ears as the apartment wood turns into the tiles of a dance floor, four feet moving together in harmony. 

“I’ve dreamed about this,” he whispers, throat clearer than it’s ever been. A head rests against his chest as the spotlights glare down at them.

“And the reality?”

“Wonderful,” he murmurs into soft curls, embracing their warmth. “All I’ve ever wanted.”

He can’t detect a single trick. Everything feels so incredibly real, so incredibly perfect, his mind doesn’t even stop to wonder and deduce just how much all of it is an illusion. The very thought of it being an illusion seems unrealistic, improbable, laughable.

No song is playing, no crowd watches on, just the two of them dancing what remains of the night away. So freeing is the activity, any and all rationality thrown out of the window. His heart is being played with like a fiddle, played with by fingers that know their way around the strings like they’ve been studying them for years.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted too.” The words ricochet around the room, snapping the strings, yanking away the spotlights and returning them to a place he thought he’d finally escaped.

“Get out.”

“Tob—”

“Leave!” He does, sludge gracing the floor as he falls.

* * *

Scratchy sheets and clear tubes and secure windows. Those three things are supposed to mean familiarity to him by now. He disagrees.

There is no familiarity in a place that can’t actually determine what’s wrong with him. A list of illnesses but none they can choose from without coming to a new conclusion immediately, because they’re all wrong and not a single person can pinpoint the underlying cause. If they just opened their eyes a little bit, things wouldn’t be so difficult, they’d be able to see what he knows.

He’s dying not from something man made, not from something that was leftover in the air, but in a world of science, legends are a thing of the past. All he needs is some rest, proper meals, expensive medicine that won’t work. 

He’d laugh at their idiocy if it didn’t result in violently throwing up into the basins by his bed. He does his best not to shake from the wave of cold that overcomes him afterwards, trying to hold himself together.

What leaves his mouth is easier to see than ever now, tiny petals bright as tangerines scattered through the sludge, making fun of him for succumbing so quickly, without resistance, without putting up a fight. He’s convinced now, that falling in love is the worst thing in the world, angry at the poets and the artists for making it out to be something that doesn’t swallow you, but rather holds you gently in its arms, careful not to drop you.

Liars. He’s been thrown about, cut up and bruised, told he’s worthless and that giving up is one of the best things he could do. His fingers tighten in the sheets, migraine forming as he leans over the basin again. “Do you really believe falling in love is the worst thing in the world?”

He doesn’t dare to spare a single glance towards his right, not that he could anyway. Too busy coughing up the remainder of his lungs to offer a response. A hand reaches out for his but he winces, taking his hand away with haste.

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.”

“I want to be there by your side, like I always have been.”

“I’m going to get better,” he says, voice hushed. “And I’m going to do it without you.”

Something heavy settles in the room, and it’s like a sledgehammer to his chest, heart punched out through his back.

“You don’t win alone.”

Looking up from the basin, for just a moment, to find no rough hand held out, waiting for him to take it. He allows his eyes to linger on the empty seat before petals start to sputter out of him again, orange as the sun setting outside.

* * *

His head pounds as he leans against the wall, knees pulled taught to his chest. He understands this feeling well enough to recognise it from all his books and all his films. Their book and films. His.

Somehow he manages to aim for the toilet beside him, unbloomed bulbs along with full-sized flowers up and out of his throat. It’s by some sheer luck that he’s avoided the stems with the thorns this time, but that doesn’t mean they’re not coming.

Does it hurt, knowing? Or is it easier? Either way he’s sure he would be as he is now, staring into brown eyes that look confused instead of sorry.

They’re not overridden with guilt, like he is, for simply loving, like it’s the grandest of crimes to be committed. No, those are the plotlines of great literature. What he has here is far from it. 

He has pain without poetry, blood without beauty, liability without love. 

He has someone whispering words to him he can’t distinguish from reality, a hand that goes through his hair and tries to keep him calm as it all spews forth from his windpipe.

“You should have said earlier. Maybe we’d have found an answer.”

“Don’t—” Fifteen petals, two thorned stems. “Don’t pretend like any of this would have gone differently. Like knowing fairytales are real would have helped.”

“No, Tobio. I meant your feelings. Why do you think I wouldn’t have returned them?”

He can’t lean against the wall anymore. It’s all coming too fast. “Who would have?”

There’s warmth wrapped around him, taking care of him as he watches the flowers drown as the toilet flushes, before he’s filling it up again, unable to stop now.

“After three years on the same side of the net, you still believe I'd disappoint you like that? When I’m right here next to you?” He scoffs with the petals.

“But you’re not here,” he spits, figuratively and literally. “You’re gone, Shōyō. You’re fucking gone.”

He’s pulled from the toilet, a towel wiped across his mouth, cleaning, as though he’s not going to throw up anymore. But that can’t possibly be true, not when his chest feels like it’s on fire.

His lips are a ghost’s when they press against his. Warm, malleable. No, he’s not the ghost, he can’t be, not when he’s still alive somewhere, out in the world, becoming better.

But it’s not right. It’s unsatisfactory, when he realises this is a goodbye instead of a hello. There are so many things needed for a goodbye, and he’s been given none of them, told to make do with a kiss fit for a ghost.

Because he’s the ghost, slipping through the cracks that grow wider with every slow beat of his heart. And one final marigold is coughed up, landing neatly in his awaiting hands.

“Don’t go too far. I have to catch up, you know?”

Something slips down his cheeks. “Not this time. This time — Don’t chase me.”

He closes his eyes, crushes the flower in the palm of his hand, and feels that warmth around him shift into something cold, unfamiliar, just barely resembling bathroom tiles.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies 
> 
> [my ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/erissapphic)


End file.
